Media Mentions

Harvard Law School professor Laurence Tribe warned against impeaching President Trump on Sunday, implying the process could worsen political dysfunction and polarization. "It's important that we not exacerbate the dysfunction and the polarization in the society that helped Donald Trump rise to power in the first place," Tribe told CNN's Fareed Zakaria. "If we were to use the impeachment power simply as a substitute for buyer's remorse, saying 'We thought this guy was terrible, but he's even worse,' if we were going to use it against ambient badness, rather than clear abuse of power — we would really use the impeachment power to undermine, rather than save, our democracy," he continued.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is stirring panic in immigrant communities by moving to limit who can get asylum in the United States. Perhaps no one is more alarmed than one Salvadoran woman living in the Carolinas. Now Sessions has personally intervened in her case, questioning whether she and other crime victims deserve protection and a path to American citizenship. The attorney general has been highly critical of the asylum system in recent months. Now Sessions has personally intervened in her case, questioning whether she and other crime victims deserve protection and a path to American citizenship. The attorney general has been highly critical of the asylum system in recent months...Over the years, immigration lawyers in the U.S. have argued that all sorts of people deserve asylum as persecuted members of a "particular social group." "There was a beginning of a shift, and a new awareness that women could get asylum, and that rape was a form of harm that constituted persecution," said Deborah Anker, a professor at Harvard Law School and the founding director of the Harvard Immigration Refugee Clinical program.

An op-ed by Terri Gerstein and Sharon Block. The Supreme Court has just told the nation’s workers: If you’re underpaid at work, or if you face discrimination on the job, you’re on your own. Federal labor law protects the right of workers to join together to improve their conditions, whether through a union or other means. But the court has now carved out a big exception to that longstanding principle. In a 5-4 decision on Monday, the court said that companies can use arbitration clauses in employment contracts to bar workers from joining forces in legal actions over problems in the workplace. In other words, workers who are underpaid, harassed or discriminated against will have to press their cases alone in arbitration, rather than with their colleagues in a class-action case, or even with their own lawsuit.

The Justice Department has asked its internal watchdog to review President Trump's charge on Twitter that the FBI spied on his 2016 election campaign. Amna Nawaz gets analysis and reaction from former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, former Justice Department official Jack Goldsmith and retired FBI agent Frank Montoya.

An op-ed by Benjamin Sachs. Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the death of Pablo Avendano, a 34-year old bike messenger who was killed while delivering food for Caviar, the app-based food delivery service. Because Avendano was classified as an independent contractor and not an employee, his family will not be entitled to workers compensation benefits that they could otherwise collect...If gig workers – Uber drivers, Lyft drivers, and Caviar delivery people – get reclassified as employees, that status will not require the firms to take away all the workers’ flexibility. In fact, the trope gets the relationship between control and employee status exactly backwards. The way the law works is this: if a firm exercises sufficient control over a worker, then the worker may be an employee.

A US expert in Islamic law says agricultural ministers and clerics in Kuwait and Qatar would be unlikely to view summer transport of sheep as halal-approved if they were shown the crowded conditions and animals forced to stand for weeks in their own excrement. Agriculture Minister David Littleproud flew to the Middle East yesterday to reassure ministers and importers in both countries that Australia’s live sheep trade would continue during the northern hemisphere summer, but under new conditions recommended by the veterinarian-led McCarthy review he initiated...But Harvard University professor Kristen Stilt, an expert and author of Animal Welfare in ­Islamic law, who has studied the Australian livestock trade, warns that the end of live exports could be hastened by a failure to meet Islamic food requirements and animal welfare laws signed by the Gulf Co-operation Council. She says even adopting a 28 per cent increase in pen space recommended by the McCarthy review is unlikely to satisfy strict Islamic law about “everything surrounding the consumption of meat by Muslims”. “It is clear to me that the footage we saw from the ships — the overcrowding, the inability of animals to lie down and rest, and the heat stress — does not comply with the requirements of Islamic law,” she said. Sheep standing or lying in their own excrement for weeks are at risk of contracting diseases and producing meat that is not halal, she says. “The same is true for animals confined in pens where other animals are becoming sick and dying. “This is not something that is considered discretionary, but rather a crucial part of living by the requirements of Islam.”

Animals Australia has urged Agriculture Minister David Littleproud to show shocking footage of cruelty on live export ships to his Middle Eastern counterparts. The minister is visiting Kuwait and Qatar to reassure those countries Australia will continue the trade of live sheep after a crackdown on dodgy exporters. In a letter to Mr Littleproud seen by AAP, Animals Australia chief executive Glenys Oogjes asks him to show the vision of sheep dying in their own filth on an August 2016 voyage to the Middle East. Almost 2500 animals died on that voyage...It comes after a US expert in Islamic law raised concerns about Middle Eastern countries supporting the trade if they were shown the conditions during the northern hemisphere summer. Harvard University professor Kristen Stilt said the overcrowding and heat stress present in the footage did not comply with Islamic law. "The sheep standing or lying in their own excrement for three weeks are also at risk for contracting diseases and producing meat that is not halal," she said.

...Today, the impeachment of Donald Trump exists on the brink of plausibility. The sine qua non of an impeachment investigation, to say nothing of actual votes to charge and remove the President, is a Democratic takeover of the House in the November elections. Such a change now looks better than possible, maybe even probable...Ultimately, every consideration of impeachment returns to the standard established in the Constitution...As in the nineteen-seventies and the nineteen-nineties, the prospect of a Presidential impeachment has spurred renewed academic interest in the subject, resulting in two recent volumes by well-known Harvard law professors. Last year, Cass Sunstein, who served in the Obama Administration, released “Impeachment: A Citizen’s Guide,” and Laurence Tribe, the noted liberal academic and litigator, has just published “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment,” written with Joshua Matz...Laurence Tribe told me that he would regard some forms of misbehavior as impeachable, such as “a pattern of abusing the bully pulpit of the Presidency, one of its most potent if informal powers—especially when amplified by social media—to stir division within the electorate to the point of violence, to give permission to white supremacists to weaponize their hatred, and otherwise to undermine the foundations of our republic.”

Like clockwork, Washington has whipped itself into a frenzy over rumors of a possible retirement on the Supreme Court. All eyes are on Justice Anthony Kennedy, 81, who reportedly considered calling it quits last spring. As the court’s current term winds to a close, speculation about his plans has again swept the capital, with court watchers searching for clues...But Ian Samuel, a Climenko Fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law, who clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said the small number of cases the court has granted could signal Kennedy is throwing in the towel. The court has only agreed to hear 15 cases so far next term. “One possibility is they are not granting cases because they don’t know who their ninth member is going to be. … You could imagine Kennedy telling the chief, ‘I’d like to keep this between us, but I’d like to retire,’ and the chief saying, ‘Let’s see who Kennedy’s replacement is before we grant all these cases,’” Samuel said.

...Costly medicines can give rise to misplaced expectations for patients and doctors navigating America’s Byzantine health care system. And the problem is compounded by well-intentioned regulators trying to help desperate patients whose medical needs are unmet. “The problem is the way the system creates incentives for both drug makers and insurers to act as they do,” said I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor who is an expert in bioethics and health law policy. “When you allow private insurers to make decisions with only a patchwork of state regulations, they will choose not to cover every drug approved by the FDA. And drug companies are for-profit entities that set prices based on market conditions. This is why you have debates over coverage.”

As Congress fights over the latest farm bill, one proposal has animal welfare and food safety advocates ― and even some farm industry groups ― sounding the alarm. They’re opposing the Protect Interstate Commerce Act, an amendment from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) that they fear could jeopardize thousands of state and local laws regulating food and farming. Also known as the King Amendment, this addition to the draft farm bill would ban states from imposing rules on the sale of out-of-state agricultural products if those rules are more restrictive than federal law ― or the law within a product’s state of origin...While it’s obvious why many animal welfare advocates would be against PICA, the amendment’s ramifications could extend much further. A Harvard Law School analysis found that PICA “has the potential to void thousands of state and local laws concerning public health and safety,” including laws surrounding food safety, packaging and invasive species.

A first-of-its-kind international arbitration workshop at Harvard Law School provided students with an opportunity to not only learn from a diverse group of the leading minds in arbitration but also, in at least one instance, to discuss the topics of the day with them over a beer. The workshop, co-directed by Three Crowns partner Luke Sobota and director of practice and senior associate Hugh Carlson, along with Harvard International Arbitration Law Students Association President Hiroko Yamamoto and HIALSA board member Christian Vandergeest, covered the entire arbitral process, from the initial steps in a dispute to the recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards.

An op-ed by Susan Crawford. This week, the Senate voted 52–47 to revive an Obama administration rule ensuring equal treatment for online traffic—the so-called “net neutrality” rule recently erased by the Trump FCC. But the vote wasn't really about "net neutrality." Instead, it was a deeply political, bipartisan call—three Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, signed on—for internet freedom writ large. Here's why: "Net neutrality," these days, is shorthand for "We don't like how much unconstrained power Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Verizon, and CenturyLink have over us."

An op-ed by Lawrence Lessig. Almost exactly 20 years ago, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the term of existing copyrights by 20 years. The Act was the 11th extension in the prior 40 years, timed perfectly to assure that certain famous works, including Mickey Mouse, would not pass into the public domain...Twenty years later, the fight for term extension has begun anew. Buried in an otherwise harmless act, passed by the House and now being considered in the Senate, this new bill purports to create a new digital performance right—basically the right to control copies of recordings on any digital platform (ever hear of the internet?)—for musical recordings made before 1972.

Laurence Tribe and Fox News fact-check the recent Rudy Giuliani headlines that Mueller told the Trump team he can’t indict a sitting president—and discuss how “to end a presidency” with Lawrence O’Donnell.

The framers of the Constitution debated myriad difficult topics in creating our system of government. Among the most contentious focused on how to remove leaders guilty of serious abuses of their offices. “Benjamin Franklin was pretty clear that without impeachment, the only way of getting rid of a tyrannical ruler would be assassination,” said Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, whose latest book, co-authored with Joshua Matz, is titled “To End a Presidency: The Power of Impeachment.”

Harvard Law professor and “To End a Presidency” author Laurence Tribe on the possibility of an impeachment trial for President Trump.

Over the years, Harvard Law School’s past relating to its troubling ties with slavery in America has been revealed, and the educational institution has faced a backlash for its historical rough patch. Since then, a plaque has been placed on the campus to honor the enslaved people whose labor created wealth and made it possible for the school to open its doors in 1817...On May 6, Jazzmin Carr [`18], a third-year law student, shared a powerful photo on Instagram of nine black women from the Harvard Law School dressed in all black with gold accents and their arms crossed in front of their chests. The caption read, “For Colored Girls [who Conquered Harvard Law/ When Settling for America’s Trash Patriarchy Wasn’t] Enuf.’••••• Ladies of Harvard Black Law Students Association’s Class of 2018.”...“As we honored and reflected on the rich history and trailblazers of our organization, I wanted to bring our current members together for a visual display of where and who we are today,” she tells Yahoo Lifestyle.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman. In politics, disagreement is good. But our current moment of polarization looks more like a political disaster: People of different beliefs watch different cable news channels, read different news sites, and listen to different radio stations. Is there an antidote? And if so, what would it look like? Here at Bloomberg Opinion, we have an idea for an experiment on a modest scale to begin the process of addressing the challenge. It’s an experiment in video, and it relies on a technique for arguments that we’re calling “The Method,” with apologies to Socrates.

An op-ed by Noah Feldman...Color me genuinely confused by the outcry against Texas televangelist Robert Jeffress, who spoke Monday at the opening of the American Embassy in Jerusalem. Jeffress has previously said that “you can’t be saved being a Jew,” that Mormonism is a “heresy” and that Islam is “wrong.” It seems strange to me, for example, that Mitt Romney, a devout Mormon, is tweeting that Jeffress is “a religious bigot.” Do those statements really make Jeffress, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, a bigot? All he is doing is echoing an almost 1,800-year-old doctrine: Extra ecclesiam nulla salus, there is no salvation outside the church. It can be traced to St. Cyprian of Carthage, who died in the year 258. The basic idea is that Jesus Christ came to save those who believe in him — and not those who don’t.

American law students entering on-campus interviews for Big Law summer associate jobs this summer will be armed with one new piece of information: whether firms require associates to sign mandatory arbitration agreements. Molly Coleman [`20], a rising 2L at Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Mass., will be paying close attention. She’s part of the reason firms will be disclosing this information at all. “This will absolutely be a key factor in determining where I decide to interview,” Coleman told Bloomberg Law...The initiative is the result of grassroots campaigns mounted by students like Coleman at top U.S. law schools, who believe mandatory arbitration agreements effectively force employees to sign away their rights to go to court if they ever experience illegal treatment in the workplace.